My name is Nick Fisherman III. It's not my real name, but that's not because I'm trying to hide from my former agency, or something. I named myself after someone I've known for most of my life, and he chose it in honor of his late best friend. I took up writing when I found myself failing 8th grade science, and realized I might never reach my dream of becoming a biochemist, a meteorologist, and a quantum physicist. I started developing my canon after a scouting trip to an island inspired what I thought would be my first novel. I founded this website upon the advice of many people, who told me I needed to get my work out there, and not wait for an agent to accept my manuscript. You can expect one new story every day. Weekdays are for microstories, which are one or two paragraphs long. They're usually only thematically linked, so you won't have to read one to understand another, but they do sometimes tell a combined story. Sundays are for my continuous longer story, The Advancement of Leona Matic, which I started in the beginning, and won't end until 2066. Saturdays are for long series, most of which take place in the same universe as Leona, and add to the larger mythology.

Friday, May 12, 2017

Microstory 580: The Return of Meteora?

Three years ago, the infamous city of Bellevue, Kansas began facing an onslaught of impossible and deadly weather phenomena. Rain, hail, snow, cloud-to-ground lightning, and many other dangers riddled the streets with no provocation, forcing the entire city to be evacuated. A team of SDS detectives reentered, however, and were able to apprehend the culprit: a woman known only by the nickname of Meteora. She’s a mysterious character, and her trial was sensationalized by the global media almost as much as the crime itself. With all the charms of a heartbreaking princess, injecting dark humor in nearly every sentence she uttered. The world fell in love with her, ultimately sparking a fan club of loyal followers who declared that, if she were to be convicted, they would rescue her from any facility. Apparently, they followed through with their threat. Not two months into Meteora’s twenty-five year sentence, a tornado formed itself in the middle of Antarctica Isocamp, which should be meteorologically nearly impossible. Even from one of the most remote parts of the planet, she somehow sent word to her new fans of both how to access one of her weather controlling machines, and how to use it. The world held its breath, just waiting for Part Deux of her reign of terror. But nothing happened...until now. Tornadoes have begun popping up all over the globe at unprecedented rates, and in locations that have never seen one before. Of course, everyone’s assumption from the very beginning was that this was Meteora’s second act, but an anonymous source close to the original investigation has another theory. He or she had this explanation:

Meteor is a woman with no name. Authorities spent countless hours trying to figure out who she was, and where she came from. What they come up was absolutely nothing. She had no apparent past. Her face was plastered all over the internet and broadcast television, with no serious response from anyone claiming to know her from before. As far as the historical records go, she doesn’t exist. There are ludicrous theories out there, like that she was born on a desert island to parents marooned there, or that she used her technology to erase everything about her from every record. But none of these track with what we do know about Meteora, which is that she’s a narcissist, and would be fully willing to tell people if any of these hypotheses were true. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that she would ever want to erase her past. All evidence points to her having some kind of neurological condition, actually, that prevents her from lying except under the most extreme circumstances. No, I don’t think she was born on an island...I think she was born in another universe. In order to determine her true identity, medical professionals subjected her to a number of tests, including a DNA analysis, facial recognition, and quantum resonance spectrometry. As we all know, this didn’t help them figure out who she was, but it did raise a few interesting questions. One extremely unorthodox experiment a pair of scientists ended up being asked to run was a cosmic frequency test. Though ultimately inconclusive—because there is simply not enough data on the subject—Meteora’s results showed a number of striking similarities to people studied a century ago who were known to have traveled to a parallel universe. Again, this does not prove anything, since we still don’t understand how interdimensional travel works, but like I said, it does raise some interesting questions, and I don’t think anyone should have the confidence to say they have the answer...except maybe Meteora herself.